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It All Comes Out in the Wash

It All Comes Out in the Wash

"This is a good place to be in a bad mood," writes Chiori Santiago
about a recent trip she made to a San Francisco laundromat. The
daunting chore of doing the laundry has dampened people's spirits
even longer than there's been soap. But Santiago was in for a
pleasant surprise. She bypassed the laundromat on the corner  a
purgatory of leaky machines, bad coffee and dog-eared magazines 
and hauled her bags across the bay to the Brain Wash, a different
kind of washhouse.

"Before long my dirty clothes are sloshing away, and I stroll
across the floor to the Brain Wash Cafe, where I can buy a latte
and settle down with a copy of the free neighborhood weekly," she
writes. "A few minutes later, a musician wedges himself into the
strip of space between the roomful of washers and the coffee bar,
plugs in his microphone and launches into loud, earnest lyrics
accompanied by the bass thrum of dryer cylinders and the soprano
whir of gyrating washers. By the time I stuff my clothes into one
of the big dryers, I'm dancing across the concrete floor and
wishing I had more dirty clothes."

Americans, whether they do their laundry at home or in
self-service establishments, wash a whopping 200 billion pounds of
clothing every year, and manufacturers of detergents, stain
removers, and washers and dryers spend huge sums to get their
products to that insatiable market. Yet in many parts of the world,
laundry is still done in the nearest river, stream or lake; the
clothes are pounded clean on the rocks and spread in the sun to
bleach and dry.

Santiago traces the history of doing the wash from ancient
Egyptian wall paintings showing men doing the scrubbing, twisting
and folding, to the modern era automatic washer. She explains the
nitty-gritty of soaps and detergents and how they fight dirt at the
microscopic level, and visits two research laboratories to learn
about products still in the pipeline. Says one researcher, "Those
of us who do the laundry don't get enough credit for the technical
decisions we make every day. Some very serious science goes into
doing the laundry."

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